July 2026

A very stylish block of Art Deco flats in Docker Street Elwood, a bit obscured by trees but you get the picture.

Built in 1938, they’ve got a vertical stair flanked asymmetrically by rounded corners with big steel framed windows and cantilevered balconies, all distinctive elements of the work of Esmond Dorney. He was very prolific, doing many flats especially in Elwood, where his family lived, and indeed his mother Marie Louise commissioned a few, including this one. Well read in the Classics, she named this block Antigone.

It was probably strata-ed in 1999 when the top floor became one flat, with a rooftop, wow. You can see a couple of curves in the plans, which he liked to add, plus the wall opening to the lounge with a kind of think plinth, which he had done in earlier projects.

I’ve added a few other 30s blocks of his for comparison, two in Elwood one in Sth Yarra. Dorney went on to a second career in Tasmania after WWII, doing a large number of very distinctive modernist houses. There’s a book by Edmond’s son Paddy Dorney, who’s done nice renderings of all the projects, (pic 3) shows the panels of brick now painted, which made the design more dynamic.

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